Ever since the various oil shortages of the 1970's many projects to try to reduce the amount of fuel used by automotive vehicles have been initiated. In the same basic time frame concern over automotive air pollution also increased. One way of reducing fuel consumption and air pollution is to ensure that the fuel is completely burned in the car's engine. One method is to atomize or break apart the liquid fuel so that the car engine is better able to burn the resulting air-fuel mixture.
Numerous prior art patents disclose apparatus for atomizing fuel in a carburetor. For example, the U.S. Pat. No. 4,162,281 to Ingraham discloses an apparatus for feeding compressed air to an automobile carburetor for subsequent atomization therein.
Similarly, the patents to Trumble U.S. Pat. No. 1,886,989, Bruckner U.S. Pat. No. 1,897,967, Holmes U.S. Pat. No. 2,012,564 and De Guyon U.S. Pat. No. 2,247,189 all disclose various types of fuel vaporization devices.
There are numerous deficiencies of the prior art including the complexity and cost of the prior art apparatus. Also, such apparatus typically includes various moving and/or non-moving parts which are located between the vaporized fuel and the outlet of the carburetor, thereby causing a relatively large percentage of the vaporized fuel to form larger droplets. In other words, the carburetor itself causes the vaporized fuel to liquify before entering the engine.